


Pack Bonded

by Kien Rugastelo (cein)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gen, Pack Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 10:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13925130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cein/pseuds/Kien%20Rugastelo
Summary: When Jim brings home a damaged cleaning robot and immediately starts to treat it like a pet, Spock and Leonard struggle not to pack-bond with it.





	Pack Bonded

**Author's Note:**

> This work is set in the same universe as Identity Theft. It is not necessary to read that work to enjoy this one. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are currently living in the same apartment, though in different rooms.

When Leonard returned home for the day, he nearly stepped on the cleaning droid that was sucking up dust near the front door. It was a small thing, barely the size of a dinner plate around and only a few inches thick, and not one of the newest models, either. While most cleaning droids ran completely silent, this one buzzed lowly in a way that almost made it sound like a bee, though that could have been due to the dent it already had in one side.

Leonard let it finish its business before letting it go on its way to another section of the house, eyeing it suspiciously. He couldn’t picture Spock spontaneously acquiring a cleaning droid when they were already keeping the apartment impeccable without help, especially not a used and damaged one. These shenanigans wreaked of—“Jim!” Leonard called into the flat, “What the hell is this?”

Jim peaked out from the kitchen, face a picture of innocence. “That’s Gregory, Bones.”

“You named it,” Leonard asked without inflection, because of course Jim did. He probably saw it in some recycling, tossed away as a damaged unit, and brought the thing home. They were never going to get rid of it. “Does it at least work alright?”

“He has a hard time reaching corners,” Jim allowed, “Just on the one side, though.”

And they were well and truly stuck with it, Leonard decided. It may as well have been a dog for easy it would have been to get Jim to part with it at this point. Leonard was staring at the droid, struggling to remember why he had moved in with Jim in the first place, when Spock also returned home. Predictably, he paused and assessed the situation for a moment. “That unit is damaged.”

“It’s Gregory, Spock,” Leonard informed him with sarcastic cheer, “Jim’s new pet.”

“He’s family!” Jim insisted, and Leonard wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a joke or not.

“Indeed,” Spock intoned with just a touch of distaste, doubtless already irritated at the droning sound.

Leonard wandered into the kitchen to fix a drink.

* * *

Leonard woke in the middle of the night to a soft tap tap tap at his door. The sound continued evenly, incessantly, even after Leonard called for whoever was at his door to go away. The sound remained unchanged—too consistent for most biological life, Leonard realized groggily, and that’s what had him climbing out of bed and opening his door to the droid.

“Aren’t you supposed to have some function where you realize you’re hitting a wall?” Leonard asked it. The damaged bot didn’t respond, only attempted to advance forward, and reversing the same distance when its sensors detected it was about to impact a life form, repeating the action much as it had against the door. If nothing else, the damn thing was determined. Leonard sighed in resignation, then stepped aside to let it pass. “Fine. Computer, white-list the cleaning droid for unlocked entry.”

The computer chimed an acknowledgment, and Leonard went back to bed. The droid finished its business and left before Leonard had returned to sleep.

* * *

It wasn’t until Leonard’s next day off that he caught Jim in the conversation pit, droid powered off and open while he worked on its innards.

“Broke down?” Leonard asked while he fixed himself a coffee.

“Nope,” Jim replied distractedly, “Just teaching an old dog a new trick.”

It was too early in the morning for this shit. “It’s not a dog, Jim.”

Jim took it in good humor, grinning back toward Leonard. “I thought Spock was the one who had trouble with metaphors.”

Leonard didn’t waste any time telling Jim exactly where he could stick his metaphors.

* * *

When Leonard next saw the droid in action, it was cleaning the ceiling, and Leonard just watched it, aghast in exasperation. Jim sidled up to him positively preening with pride. “Like it?”

All of Leonard’s frustrations came out in a single breath. “Why is it on the ceiling, Jim?”

“He kept getting stuck on walls,” Jim explained, and Leonard had many memories of Jim getting up at the incessant tap tap tap of the droid repeatedly bumping a wall, just to reorientate it and let it continue on its way. “I couldn’t get the sensor to work properly, so I figured he can’t get stuck at walls if he can climb them. The ceiling was just a bonus.”

* * *

Leonard was fixing dinner when he next heard the tapping of the droid getting stuck somewhere. He just let it go for a while, knowing that when Jim heard it, he’d go rescue it, but Jim never came.

“Jim, I thought you fixed that thing!” Leonard called as the tapping sound started getting to him, but Jim didn’t respond, and Leonard figured he must have left for the day. “Clean bot, power off,” he tried instead, but the bot gamely continued ramming whatever surface it was stuck against. Of course Jim would have made sure it didn’t respond to normal commands. Leonard tried again: “Gregory! Power off!”

The bot ignored the command in favor of continuously ramming itself against wherever it was stuck and Leonard practically threw down the bowl of greens in favor of following the sound to wherever the damn thing was and fixing it himself. Leonard found it in a corner, butting up against it and trying to climb the crevice, but not gaining any traction.

Leonard shook his head. “Not so clever now, are we, Jim?” For his own sanity, Leonard bent down and faced the bot away from the corner so it could go be annoying somewhere else, much more quietly. “Here you go, little fella.”

As the bot scooted away, Leonard realized he had talked to the thing, and cursed quietly. This was Jim’s fault, it had to be.

* * *

Jim fixed the corner issue and continued adding new features as time went on, and he was always painfully smug about it. It knew its name, it could respond to simple directions, it could clean counters, and a few other things. Jim returned to the conversation pit one evening when Leonard was relaxing with a beer, watching a documentary on the viewer. He was looking more smug than ever, as if this was the feature that would finally win Leonard over. “I taught Gregory how to fetch.”

“It’s not a dog, Jim,” Leonard reminded him for what felt like the thousandth time.

“You’ll really like this one, though,” Jim promised.

Leonard thought Jim was delusional. “Why would I ever want to play fetch with a cleaning droid?”

Jim just peaked his head back to where Gregory was cleaning the refrigerator door. “Gregory, fetch me a beer.”

In disbelief, Leonard tore his attention from the viewer and watched on as the bot used a low-powered tractor beam to push the door open. It detached from the door then and hovered as it used the beam again to grab a beer from the fridge and balance it on top of itself. It lowered slowly to the ground, then scooted over to where Jim was waiting.

Jim plucked the drink from on top of the bot. “Thank you, Gregory.” He popped open the cap and took a triumphant sip.

“Alright, so it’s got one useful feature,” Leonard admitted.

“You like it,” Jim insisted.

“I _might_ use it,” Leonard allowed.

Jim knew better. “Why don’t you try it out?”

Leonard glanced at his empty bottle and decided it couldn’t hurt. “Clean bot, come here.” The droid ignored him.

“You have to use his name, Bones.”

Leonard wasn’t surprised. “Gregory,” calling the bot by its name left an acidic taste in his mouth, “Come here.” The bot chimed quietly and lumbered back to where he and Jim were sitting, then waited patiently for direction. Leonard set the empty bottle on top of the bot. “Put the bottle in the recycler and get me another beer.”

They both watched as the bot went to action, completing its tasks slowly, but properly, and Leonard couldn’t deny that this was probably one of the features he would actually use.

“Not so useless after all, is he?” Jim asked, beaming Leonard’s way.

Leonard refused to dignify that with a reply.

* * *

Jim wasn’t the only one who had been adding new features, and it wasn’t long after Spock observed that the droid could “fetch” as Jim called it, that Spock had introduced programming of his own.

It was simple really, just introducing a scheduled task to perform each morning, and so Spock had a glass of water waiting for him on his nightstand when he awoke. Jim, of course, realized this the next time he thought to add another feature, and just had to bring it up. “You like Gregory, don’t you Spock?”

Spock glanced up from his breakfast, tilting his head to the side just so, as if surprised that Jim would need to confirm this. “I have always welcomed Gregory’s contributions to our household.”

“So you like him,” Jim confirmed.

“I am not adverse to its continued presence,” Spock clarified. “Though I would much prefer it to operate silently.”

Jim propped his chin on a fist, watching as Gregory cleaned about halfway up the wall. “I think it’s part of its charm.”

Spock was not convinced.

* * *

It finally happened one morning when Leonard was making coffee, and he was only happy that Jim wasn’t around to witness the event. He asked Gregory to fetch him some creamer, and the bot did so dutifully. It even passed the bottle into Leonard’s waiting hand. Maybe it was because he wasn’t paying attention, or maybe it was because he was still half asleep. Still, the words slipped out of his mouth before he could think better of them: “Thanks, Greg.”

The bot chimed in a tone that Jim probably had thought sounded cheerful before zipping away, and when what Leonard had said caught up to him, he cursed himself for a good minute, though he should have known it was inevitable.

Humans could pack-pond with anything.

* * *

It was a rare day with all three of them in the common area at one time—Leonard and Jim in the conversation pit and Spock just returning home from work—that Leonard realized that Spock had been suckered in, too. Gregory was buzzing along, cleaning the kitchen floor when Spock addressed it. “Gregory, run silent mode.”

Jim audibly gasped, whipping around in his seat. “Spock you didn’t.” Spock didn’t acknowledge this at all and proceeded to order tea from the replicator. “Gregory, end silent mode.” Gregory did no such thing, and Leonard broke into giggles that progressively got more and more out of hand as Jim got increasingly frustrated. “Gregory, run audible,” Jim tried again, “Gregory undo silent mode.”

Spock stirred his tea serenely, hardly paying Jim any mind. “Listen to Jim, Gregory.”

Gregory’s buzzing started again and Leonard nearly fell off the couch in laughter as Jim’s face fell. “Look’s like it’s Spock’s now, Jim.”

“I can’t believe this,” Jim muttered in dejection. “My own droid… Leaving me for Spock!”

“You forget to feed him, Jim,” Spock chided, deliberately dropping a few crumbs to the floor, which Gregory zipped right over to gobble up. “When programming a system with dog-like traits, you must keep in mind it may exhibit dog-like tendencies as well.”

Jim frowned, glancing between Spock and Gregory in suspicion as Gregory trailed Spock to the pit as well. “You programmed him to do that.”

“Indeed.” Spock sat on the couch, and Gregory parked itself by his feet.

“I can’t believe you would to that to Gregory.”

“Jim,” Leonard spoke up, “If you don’t like it, you can always change it back.”

Jim huffed at that, studying Gregory at Spock’s feet for a moment. “Gregory, here,” Jim called, indicating the vacant spot next to him on the couch. Gregory made its way over without hesitation, parking itself against Jim’s lap, buzzing quietly all the way. Jim rubbed a hand over its dented shell lazily, feeling the vibrations like a cat’s purr. “No, I think I like him like this. Thanks, Spock.”

Spock curled his legs under himself, settling in with a PADD. “You are quite welcome, Jim.”

Leonard only shook his head. “You both are impossible.”


End file.
